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Luis Suárez: Home & away

Everyone’s favourite riddle wrapped in an enigma was a topic of Twitter conversation between various analysts yesterday. The matter at hand was Luis Suárez’s improved goal conversion this season compared to his previous endeavours. Suárez has previously been labelled as inefficient by members of the analytics community (not the worst thing he has been called mind), so explaining his upturn is an important puzzle.

In the 2012/13 season, Suárez scored 23 goals from 187 shots, giving him a 12.3% conversion rate. So far this season he has scored 25 goals from 132 shots, which works out at 18.9%.

What has driven this increased conversion?

Red Alert

Below I’ve broken down Suárez’s goal conversion exploits into matches played home and away over the past two seasons. In terms of sample sizes, in 2012/13 he took 98 shots at home and 89 shots away, while he has taken 69 and 63 respectively this season.

Season

Home

Away

Overall

2012/13

11.2%

13.5%

12.3%

2013/14

23.2%

14.3%

18.9%

The obvious conclusion is that Suárez’s improved goal scoring rate has largely been driven by an increased conversion percentage at home. His improvement away is minor, coming in at 0.8% but his home improvement is a huge 12%.

What could be driving this upturn?

Total Annihilation

Liverpool’s home goal scoring record this season has seen them average 3 goals per game compared to 1.7 last season. Liverpool have handed out several thrashings at home this season, scoring 3 or more goals in nine of their fourteen matches. Their away goal scoring has improved from 2 goals per game to 2.27 per game for comparison.

Liverpool have been annihilating their opponents at home this season and I suspect Suárez is reaping some of the benefit of this with his improved goal scoring rate. Liverpool have typically gone ahead early in their matches at home this season but aside from their initial Suárez-less matches, that hasn’t generally seen them ease off in terms of their attacking play (they lead the league in shots per game at home with 20.7).

My working theory is that Suárez has benefited from such situations by taking his shots under less pressure and/or better locations when Liverpool have been leading at home. I would love to hear from those who collect more detailed shot data on this.

Drilling down into some more shooting metrics at home adds some support to this. Suárez has seen a greater percentage of his shots hit the target at home this season compared with last (46.4% vs 35.7%). He has also seen a smaller percentage being blocked this season (13% vs 24.5%). Half of Suárez’s shots on target at home this season have resulted in a goal compared to 31.4% last season. Away from home, the comparison between this season and last is much closer.

These numbers are consistent with Suárez taking his shots at home this season in better circumstances. I should stress that there is a degree of circularity here as Suárez’s goal scoring is not independent of Liverpool’s. Further analysis is required.

Starcraft

The above is an attempt to explain Suárez’s improved goal scoring form. I doubt it is the whole story but it hopefully provides some clues ahead of more detailed analysis. Suárez may well have also benefited from a hot-streak this season and the big question will be whether he can sustain his goal scoring form over the remainder of this season and into next.

As I’ve shown previously, there is a large amount of variability in player shot conversion from season to season. Some of this will be due to ‘luck’ or randomness but some of this could be due to specific circumstances such as those potentially aiding Suárez this season. Explaining the various factors involved in goal scoring is a tricky puzzle indeed.